When you’re building a relationship with a new client, customer, or business partner, it’s important to foster a sense of trust through personalized and thoughtful communication. To accomplish this via email specifically, you must first set up a professional email address. This is the “From” and/or “Reply” address that a recipient sees when you send them a response to their query, marketing campaign materials, or your newsletter.
Another reason why your email address should be professional (rather than you, the business owner, sharing your personal email address) is that your email is all over your other marketing channels including your business card, website, direct mail, and social media channels.
Benefits of Professional Email Addresses
By creating a professional email address for your business you improve your company’s perceived reputation and legitimize your brand.
Here are five benefits of a professional business email:
1. Your email address is memorable.
Your email address will be memorable, on-brand, and concise so customers can easily recall and use your contact information.
2. It makes your brand feel trustworthy.
Anyone can create a free email address on Gmail or Yahoo. When you invest in a business email address that ends with your own domain, you show your customers you’ve spent the time and money to build your business. This contributes to social proof around your brand and products/services.
Even if you haven’t gathered enough customer reviews to prove your trustworthiness, a professional email will still make you appear as a professional and trustworthy business and future support the authority of your Google listing.
3. You’ll look professional.
As you may have already guessed, a professional business email is designed to make you appear more professional. First, the person you contact is less likely to ignore your email, as your email shows you mean business. Second, your email will even look professional to spam filters, so your emails won’t be marked as suspicious or booted to the spam folder.
4. Your brand will be consistent.
Creating custom email addresses will ensure your online presence is consistent and easy to find. Plus, all of your employees and departments can have matching emails with your company name. Consistent branding makes it easier for your customers to ensure they’re contacting the right individuals or teams. It also improves internal communication, too.
5. Security will improve.
When you use a custom email domain, you have complete control over who can use your accounts and can easily add and delete users as your team changes.
Professional Email Address Ideas & Best Practices
Here are some more email address ideas and best practices to consider leveraging at your local business.
1. Combine initials with names.
Keep your email addresses simple and make it clear who their owners are. Make variations by combining initials with your last name or first name. Let’s use the name John L. Smith in the following email address examples—any of these email addresses could work nicely for your business.
- First initial and last name: jsmith@companyname.com
- First initial, middle name, and last name: jlopez.smith@companyname.com
- First initial, middle initial, and last name: jlsmith@companyname.com
2. Avoid names that could have other meanings.
Some names can have different meanings when combined in an email address. For example, if you have an employed named Bryan Atman, and you choose to combine the first initial of the first name with the entire last name, the result with be Batman. You would not want to email clients using batman@domain.com.
3. Keep your address PC.
PC is an abbreviation for “politically correct.” To keep your email addresses PC means to be careful and thoughtful when making decisions to avoid upsetting or offending any group of people. You can do this by not including any terms that refer to gender or sexual orientation, race or color, genetic details, religion, disability, and age.
4. Avoid numbers.
Using numbers usually makes email addresses harder to remember. It may even trigger spam filters, causing the email to be sent into the junk folder. If your brand name has numbers, you can try a generic email name or term like contact@companyname.com and use the business name as a domain.
5. Consider abbreviations.
Email addresses need to be concise. If you or your business has a long name, it’s okay to use a shortened version. However, make your decision to use an abbreviation consistent across all emails and ensure your abbreviation is on-brand and is complementary to your full company name.
6. Don’t include company titles or positions.
Company positions can change over time so don’t include them in your email address. Additionally, email recipients probably won’t care about that information. So refrain from including your position, even if you’re the owner of a small business. Instead, include titles or positions in your professional email signature along with other contact information.
7. Try out attractive combinations
There are many ways to spice up an email address. Most business owners choose to simply use their full name or a variation of it in their professional email address. Common email formats include:
- Just the first name: john@companyname.com
- First name with last initial: johns@companyname.com
- First initial with last name: jsmith@companyname.com
- Full name: johnsmith@companyname.com
- Full name with a period: john.smith@companyname.com
8. Consider a generic business email address
If you’re creating a primary email address for people to contact your business as a whole—the one you’ll display on all your online business listings—common options may include:
- info@companyname.com
- hello@companyname.com
- contact@companyname.com
Department-specific email addresses should be just as short, simple, and memorable. For example, hr@domain.com may make more sense for your human resources department than humanresources@domain.com.
How to Create a Business Email Address in 3 Steps
Before you begin our step-by-step process to set up your professional email address, it’s important to note that you do need to pay for your business email. There is no way around paying your email providers when you want to use a domain with your business name. Plus, free domain names rarely fit the bill for professionalism or memorability.
Luckily, business emails aren’t always expensive. They can be purchased for as little as $3 per user per month for a basic plan and rarely exceed $30 per user per month for top-tier enterprise plans.
Here’s what you need to do to set up your professional email account:
1. Purchase your domain name.
Most business owners already have a domain name purchased for their website, but if you don’t, this is the time. This domain name will replace the dreaded “aol.com” or “gmail.com” at the end of a business email.
Domain names can be purchased on any domain marketplace website. Some of the most popular domain creation websites are:
- Squarespace: Squarespace has domains that start at $20 per year. The biggest perk of getting your domain through Squarespace is the fact that your domain will always renew at the same rate, with no hidden costs.
- Bluehost: Bluehost domains start at $11.99 per year.
- Google Domains: If you want your business fully integrated with the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) once you’ve created your email accounts, Google Domains is a convenient place to make your purchase. It allows easy integrations with top website builders.
The key when choosing the domain name is keeping it highly relevant to your business name and brand.
2. Create your email account.
After creating your domain, you can begin setting up your email account. To do so, use one of these popular email service providers to create your custom email address:
- Gmail: Google is one of the leading email service providers, thanks to the entire suite of business services it already provides. You can create your professional Gmail account and get access to the entire Google Workspace for as little as $6 monthly per user.
- Microsoft Office 365: Office 365 is another popular suite of services that includes business email services for as little as $5 monthly per user for an annual commitment.
- Zoho: If all you need is your professional email and basic office apps like Zoho Docs, Zoho will get you just that for the low price of $3 per user per month.
Many web hosting platforms like Bluehost will actually include email services in the bundles they offer, so you may want to check your options before purchasing a separate plan with an email service provider. Hosting packages can often get you a steep overall discount on the services you need for your company’s online presence.
3. Optimize your email.
Once your professional email address is created, make sure it reflects your brand and feels professional. To do so, open email settings and add a profile picture and email signature.
If you chose to create email addresses for your different departments (e.g. marketing@companyname.com), set up email forwarding as needed. For example, emails to your marketing account can also be sent directly to your individual marketing team members to ensure receipt.
3 Unprofessional Email Address Examples
Unprofessional email address can negatively affect your business’ reputation and lead to a decrease in business. Here are some examples of what not to do.
1. Avoid including roles and positions within the company.
As mentioned earlier, email addresses that mention roles or positions within a company don’t always sound professional—avoid creating an email address like the following:
2. Don’t use nicknames.
Keep the use of nicknames to personal email addresses, not professional ones. Not all of your recipients know about someone nickname and this has the potential to cause confusion or even a lack of trust—so, use full names in email addresses.
For example, if an employee has a nickname they’ve been called for years but is unrelated to their real name (e.g. “Roo” or “Beaner”), avoid using those nicknames in their email addresses. If an employee prefers going by their nickname, simply have them introduce themselves in their email copy with that nickname.
3. Exclude numbers and symbols.
Exclude numbers and symbols in email addresses (unless it’s not possible). They make email addresses appear to be less trustworthy and more likely to be sent directly to junk or spam. Here are some examples of what to avoid:
- johnsmith95@companyname.com
- jsmith123@companyname.com
- johnsmith1208@companyname.com
You can use underscores and punctuation marks if it makes sense to do so but try to limit the amount of them you use.
Make Your Online Brand Count
Creating your business email address is an important step in building a trustworthy brand. With a custom and professional email address, you’ll be taken more seriously by prospects, customers, and email providers (i.e., the likelihood of of your emails being sent directly into “Spam” or “Junk” folders decreases.
